Paolo Barti has long been fascinated by the possibility of creating a dialogue between past and present, bringing to light historical episodes from which we may have collectively grown distant. Through archival research, the artist reveals an unmediated human experience shaped by uncertainty, nostalgia and disillusionment – the defining conditions of migration.
The multimedia installation Talkin’ American Dream offers a sharp and considered examination of the psychological burden of mid-twentieth-century Italian emigration. Shifting attention away from the mass migrations of the early twentieth century towards the less frequently discussed and studied post-war exodus of the late 1940s and 1950s, Barti dismantles the mythology surrounding the idealised American Dream.
The narrative is not softened by hopeful images of suburban life. Instead, it directly exposes a harsher reality: cultural alienation, systemic estrangement, fragmented identity and the inherent difficulty of communicating the migrant experience. Combining a loop of archival footage with a physical projection, the work transforms private, domestic pain into a collective monument to alienation.
The film layers disparate footage, family photographs and symbolic images of animals into a spectral, discordant sequence. These are occasionally interrupted by striking title cards: empty promises imposed upon the grey landscape of an American metropolis.
Structured across three narrative stages, the film traces the migrant’s emotional decline. It moves from the profound hesitation surrounding departure from rural Northern Italy, through the alienating routines of American society and its disorientating visual language, to a final phase of bleak psychological resignation.
Of particular importance is the editing technique, which draws on dialectical montage. The approach recalls the theories associated with the Soviet film movement of the early twentieth century, particularly Sergei M. Eisenstein’s concept of montage through conflict and opposition.
This cinematic core is extended through a physical installation: an automatic 35 mm slide projector positioned on top of a vintage suitcase. Alongside the film, it projects a single family photograph manipulated in the darkroom.
Paolo Barti (b. 1998) is a multimedia artist and visual designer based between Piacenza and Milan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and is currently completing a master’s degree in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA in Milan.
His practice focuses primarily on the role of time in shaping both individuals and landscapes, whether urban or rural. He is particularly attentive to the environmental and sociocultural changes produced by contemporary processes of transformation, examining how they affect the relationship between individuals and the places they inhabit. In his work, the loss or alteration of a place becomes a metaphor for a broader sense of disorientation and change.
Text by Silvia Laurelli